February 10, 2010

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 54 (MP3s)

On my radio show this Friday I will be paying respects to Abraham Lincoln on his 201st birthday by playing Lord Buckley's heady hipsemantic version of the Gettysburg Address. To get you in the mood, enjoy His Lordship's lesser-known but still thrilling "straight" reading of the speech, from 1956: Gettysburg Address

(1) The core trio of the Ghanaian funk band Marijata got its start as the Sweet Beans—a highlife combo sponsored by the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Board. ••• (2) Hillbilly wannabes from mid-'50s Melbourne, the Trailblazers were a C&W dynamo down under. Weekly performers over Radio 3XY, some of their shows were broadcast over Nashville's WSM, the airwave home of the Grand Ole Opry. (Pick Hit: The Trailblazers version of the Hawaiian duo Kanui and Lula's "Tomi Tomi"!) ••• (3) Long before she connived to form the Gang of Four, Mao Zedung's third wife, Jiang Qing, was a movie starlet. An architect of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang was surely hostile to Western-style pop recordings like the ones on this compilation sung by stage and screen sirens of the Hong Kong nightclub circuit. ••• (4) Co-produced by Roberta Flack and Joel Dorn, Marion Williams's pop experiment from 1971 features Bob Dylan and George Harrison tunes, covers of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," "Hare Krishna," and more—all with backing from the Dixie Hummingbirds. ••• (5) The largest bamboo stalks on earth are found only on the islands of western Bali, which also happens to be home to 99% of the world's jegog gamelan orchestras. Up to 10 feet in length, the massive jegog, the lowest instrument in the ensemble, takes two people to play and creates otherwordly low-pitched resonations that you feel before you hear. It's like giving your solar plexus an enema. ••• (6) For the record, WFMU's Downtown Soulville show, hosted by Mr. Fine Wine, predated by three years this 1998 boot (made in "Luxembourg") of rare '60s soul.